Reasons for Optimism on the U.S. Economy -- We're the King of the World!

Putting aside the fact that conventional wisdom on the economy has generally been pessimistic for four years running; putting aside the competition among media commentators and journalists to be the first to call the next financial meltdown; and putting aside ideological trading patterns and media commentary designed to talk down the economy until the November election so as to hurt President Obama's re-election chances -- the facts show a solid case that the U.S. is now the best-positioned large scale economy in the world just now.

Almost all commentators and journalists, of course, missed calling the 2007-2009 "Great Recession" much less the housing market and housing finance collapse that triggered it, so it's understandable that they would have bias toward predicting the next meltdown. And over the past three spring trading seasons we have heard plenty of worst case scenarios promoted as base case scenarios in order to qualify for the Cassandra Sweepstakes on cable TV.

Greece was going to leave the Euro and have a disorderly default; Germany was going to get fed up and go back to the Deutschmark; the euro itself was going to fall in value to arithmetic parity with the U.S. dollar (it still stands at about 1.31 as this is written); then the U.S. was going to default; now its Spain, Italy, France! Read more........